Obey, but think hard!

(Illustration: the existing US National Debt Clock installed near Times Square in New York has exceeded its limit to accommodate the figure more than 10 trillion dollar on the 7th of October, 2008. As a temporary treatment, the dollar sign has to be squeezed to put additional figure '1' and the new one which can display quadrillion figure will be installed next year. The Debt Clock was installed in 1989 when the national debt of the US was about 2.7 trillion. At present, with the population of about 305 million, the average debt that each American bears has reached $34,000.00.)

A bit surprise to see Slavoj Zizek's latest writing on the financial turmoil and its implication appeared in a French mainstream newspaper. It's a translated version, and I guess the original English one has encountered some difficulties to be published in US, as it has somehow touched the hard kernel of the problem that most commentators that have appealed for fair play are either quite ambiguous on the fundamental issue of progressive values or avoiding being too political or radical in their argument.

The problem that Zizek has identified lies in the overlap of the left view and some conservative republicans', as both of them are against the rescue plan and they share disdainful feeling for those big CEOs and speculators in Wall Street who are protected by ludicrous golden parachutes while leaving disasters of their risky decisions to ordinary people that have been dragged into mortgage nightmare.

What the left like Michael Moore denounced-the rescue plan as the looting of the century is to fix up the problems of ailing financial institutions that virtually serve the interests of the rich and the powerful, so what seems to be a socialist's measure of 700 billion bailout plan indeed helps little the poor people. However, since the prosperity of Main Street can not be sustained if Wall Street goes wrong, state intervention is indeed necessary.

In an English version that has appeared on LRB, Zizek presents another notion - 'trickle-down'.

'The standard ‘trickle-down’ argument against redistribution (through progressive taxation etc) is that instead of making the poor richer, it makes the rich poorer. However, this apparently anti-interventionist attitude actually contains an argument for the current state intervention: although we all want the poor to get better, it is counter-productive to help them directly, since they are not the dynamic and productive element; the only intervention needed is to help the rich get richer, and then the profits will automatically spread down to the poor. Throw enough money at Wall Street, and it will eventually trickle down to Main Street. If you want people to have money to build, don’t give it to them directly, help those who are lending it to them. This is the only way to create genuine prosperity – otherwise, the state is merely distributing money to the needy at the expense of those who create wealth.'

The English one is ended with US campaign in mind, and the French one is more general, philosophically speaking. Zizek warns that the left leaning Democrats will be inconsistent in political stand if they are in line with the premise of Republican populists that capitalism and the free market economy are a popular, working-class affair, while state interventions are an upper-class strategy to exploit hard-working ordinary people.

Against the illusion that market is neutral, Zizek rightly argues that because of the asymmetric character of risky decision making process and national interests first in dealing with international trade conflicts, any decisions thus made to preserve free market and its operation are political in their nature, therefore we must think which side we should be in. The question is not whether or not the state should intervene, but what kind of intervention it is. In a really political sense, both presidential candidates were struggling to define the conditions for their campaign activities while facing new circumstances.

Here is a much sharper analysis in the English version:

'Politics is precisely the struggle to define the ‘neutral’ terrain, which is why McCain’s proposal to reach across party lines was pure political posturing, a partisan politics in the guise of non-partisanship, a desperate attempt to impose his position as universal-apolitical. What is even worse than ‘partisan politics’ is a partisan politics that tries to mask itself as non-partisan: by imposing itself as the voice of the Whole, such a politics reduces its opponents by making them agents of particular interests.'

Perhaps we all need to think resolutely on how come this society has created such an ailing institution which in turn has blackmailed and played fool with ordinary people.